Afghan governor among 8 killed in attack

Saturday

Aug 31, 2013 at 12:01 AMAug 31, 2013 at 10:19 AM

KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber slipped into a crowd of mourners at a funeral in northern Afghanistan yesterday, waited until the district governor and two of his bodyguards were leaving the mosque, and detonated his vest, killing eight people and wounding 16, officials said.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber slipped into a crowd of mourners at a funeral in northern Afghanistan yesterday, waited until the district governor and two of his bodyguards were leaving the mosque, and detonated his vest, killing eight people and wounding 16, officials said.

The attack, the latest incident in a particularly bloody week, succeeded in killing Sheikh Sadruddin Saadi, the governor of the Dasht-e-Archi district of Kunduz province and the apparent target, said Mohammad Khalil Andarabi, the provincial police chief.The funeral was in honor of a local man who had died of natural causes, Andarabi added.

No one claimed immediate responsibility for the attack, which took place about 8 a.m., but analysts said they suspected the Taliban.Saadi, a high-profile mujahedeen leader in Kunduz province during the Soviet occupation, was a member of the anti-Taliban Jamiat-e-Islami party.

Afghan and NATO officials had warned that the Taliban and other militants could step up attacks after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as they try to exploit the remaining months of Afghanistan’s “fighting season,” which generally lasts from March to October, when Afghanistan’s brutal winter sets in.

The large number of Taliban attacks this week have left dozens of Afghan civilians and security officials dead, along with three NATO troops.

A NATO soldier died on Monday in southern Afghanistan after a roadside bomb detonated. On Tuesday, six men who had been kidnapped while working on a United Nations development project were killed when negotiations broke down for their release in western Herat province, among Afghanistan’s more stable areas.

On Wednesday, a NATO soldier was killed in western Afghanistan, the same day four civilians were killed in southern Helmand province and several Afghan security forces were killed in eastern Ghazni province during a Taliban attack on a NATO military base. And on Thursday, 15 policemen were killed in an ambush in western Farah province. For the week, at least 30 civilians were killed by militants.

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